


Ghost Stories

by ladyrose



Category: Il buono il brutto il cattivo | The Good The Bad and The Ugly (1966)
Genre: Action/Adventure, Alternate Universe - 19th Century, American History, Backstory, Betrayal, Dysfunctional Family, Father-Son Relationship, Friendship, Gen, Grief/Mourning, Self-Reflection, Unreliable Narrator
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2017-12-04
Updated: 2018-01-30
Packaged: 2019-02-10 10:36:50
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 4
Words: 4,855
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12910146
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ladyrose/pseuds/ladyrose
Summary: An interpretation on Blondie’s backstory





	1. Wraith

> **_Northeast Texas, 1846_ **

 

He takes up most of the doorway.

At least, he appears to. Maybe it’s that the sun is at his back and his shadow throws long and dark across the expanse of the room. Maybe it’s the wide brim of his hat or the smoke radiating from the shadowy space where is face ought to be.

One minute ago, the door’s threshold was empty. The endless stretch of yellow and gray grassy plains. Empty. The storm was retreating north and the sun stretched out from behind a blanket of clouds due west.

 _I’m back_ , it sighs, gesturing with hazy rays of light towards the shadow on the horizon. _This time, with a guest_.

  
The figure had been riding in fast. Flying almost like a Bellerophon atop a sabino Pegasus. And what felt like a half minute later he was in the door.

  
The man tightened his grip on the knife, halfway across the whetstone and repeats his question.

  
“Well,” a pause, the pinprick orange glow from his cigar growing brighter as a fresh plume of smoke filled the room. “I came to see if you were still alive.”

The man didn’t reply.

The figure in the door stepped in with slow deliberateness, settled in the seat across from the man at the table.

  
“I saw the cross on my way down.”

  
No reply.

  
“How long has it been, son?” Spoken in a foreign softness.

  
His throat had been tight those following weeks. Perpetually so. _Painfully_ so. He swallows and tries to ignore the sandpapery feeling he swore he long since got rid of.

  
“Half a year.”

  
“Half a year.” The figure repeats, he leans back in the chair, taking his hat off and setting it on the arm of his chair in some form—the man thinks—of respect.

As much respect as Orion Miller could conjure.

  
Orion’s face is sunburnt, the man notes and means to ask him about it, as his guest studies the changes in the house.

It’s less organized maybe. His things scattered across the table and bed and floor. Hers tucked away, underground behind the house in the chest she wanted to gift his future wife. The house is a lot less warmer now that she’s gone. But he’s been surviving. And he learned, whether he wished it or not, a lot about survival in those six months. He wonders, briefly, what Orion is thinking of him. A voice that’s distantly his own echoes from the back of his head that he doesn’t care.

  
“Thought you’d be in Garrett till I saw the smoke from the chimney,” Orion said after a lengthy silence. “Your mother...she had a sister there didn’t she?”

  
“She’s occupied as it is,” the man said in way of saying that she didn’t reply to his letters. “I thought _you_ were down south.”

Orion blinks, then smiles.

“My business had me west,” he said, rubbing a hand across his jaw. “Away from the rain.”

Another beat of silence. The knife still in a white knuckled grip and half dull.

“That’s why you’re still here. Isn’t it?”

It was a loaded question. There were several reasons why he was still here. They all began one way and ended the same. All in a way he was too ashamed to admit out loud. All in a way that seemed better to fight down than voice. He dragged the blade across the whetstone, one quick motion, then set it with finality atop the table.

“She told you something. Well before she died. What was it?”

“I swore to keep it,” Orion replied readily, palms upturned. “And I always keep a promise.”

 _Fair enough_ , the man thought. He stood, crossing the room and retrieved a bag from under the bed, dropping it on the tattered quilt and turning to look Orion in the eye.

“I want to go with you,” the man says, as he had practiced for weeks in his head. “You and James.”

Orion smiled again, smoothing his dark hair and replacing his hat. With a final look around the house and a stiff nod, he walked out the way he came.

The man followed.


	2. Olim

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> A scene in between. Can be skipped from Ch. 1 to (the future) Ch. 3. Or read. As this is from TMWNN POV, this is going to be the last chapter where his reflective type thoughts are the bulk of the chapter as things are soon to get dicey. (You’ll have to read the rest of this as he views and hears it it aka the ‘Unreliable Narrator’ tag is about to take over)
> 
> Something here might be important later on. Or might not. Maybe we see a glimpse of Orion’s character and a vague headcanon for TMWNN. Who knows. 
> 
> The next chapter will introduce the main characters. And proceed, as mentioned, to get dicey.
> 
> This is also the last you’ll hear commentary from me. If you have a question about anything, leave a comment or send an ask to my tumblr. Thanks for reading.
> 
> (Note: All locations are fictional)

 

 

 

> _Northeast Texas, August, 1845_

_That evening, he had scrubbed his hands until they were red and raw and any traces of dirt were gone from skin and mind. He had went to sleep and woke sweating, and wanted to tell her about the nightmare he had. About how he got that minister from Garrett just as she asked. About how he went to see Aunt Beth and she sent him away with a door between them, but it was never really a door keeping them apart was it? It was nineteen of his years and twenty of hers.  
_

_He sits up, and the house is eerily quiet.  
_

_The puddle of water at the base of the bucket he used the night before hadn’t dried.  
_

_He shivered, considered going back to bed and thinking better of it, got up.  
_

_If honoring a life meant getting up, he could get up._

 

 

 

 

> **Three Miles South of Sterling City, OK, 1846**

He wakes to a solid kick to his ankle. Orion stands over him, hat discarded and inky black hair clubbed haphazardly at his neck.

He’s extending a cigar.

“You were thrashing.” By way of explanation.

The man accepts the offering and nods his thanks.

They are stopped to rest and let their horses graze, an hour outside of Sterling City which Orion explains isn’t a city at all, just a town with an ego.

And he listens in interest.

Half listening, really.

Half interested.

Four days they had been following a vague trail and the man has been following Orion’s conversation, when he feels so inclined to break the silence. _Oh yes, he was out near Amarillo for the better part of a year, and he’d been cooking in the heat like the steamed dumplings his mother used to make, rest her soul—_

A pause.

A swear under his breath.

An apology.

 _But James would talk about him on occasion. He’d be glad to see him again. And something, something, something_...He tunes it out for the most part. Nodding when there’s a pause and adding his own two cents when Orion’s voice hitches into a question. As it did now.

“I’m fine,” The man answers. A half lie.

The half truth? There _is_ a strange sort of feeling that had been clinging to him every since they left Garrett, and it waves something akin to doubt in front of him.

 _So now, here we are_ , it whispers.

 _You pack up, you sell what you can’t carry, you bury her, you bury all those things_ _those posters in town say about the man you’re traveling with, are you lost? Can you match him? Is this the lifestyle you want?_

 _Are you desperate?_  

Orion is still watching him, expecting him to elaborate, but that’s answer enough he figures.

“Don’t look it,” Orion chuckles and then, seemingly remembering why he’s there in the first place, sobers up quickly, sitting across from him in the grass.

“Six months, eh?” He asks.

The man nods.

“And the cattle...?”

“Only three. Sold them.”

Orion hums, retrieving a tin from his bag at his hip and meticulously begins rolling a cigar for himself.

The man watches for a minute and then his eyes are wandering over the empty stretch of sloping green, already so different from the world back home. _This isn’t desperation_ , he answers the feeling. Late, but it’s an answer all the same. _This is another form of survival. He could do that._

“I have to ask you something serious, son.”

His eyes snap back to Orion, the cigar balanced between his teeth now.

“Your life is changed now. And to all the world and maybe yourself you might think yourself a man fully grown but you’ve got six months of the world under your belt yet. And I’m going to give you two choices, right here. And you’ll learn quick, choices are the most important things in life. You answer me and answer me honest, understand?”

“Sure, I understand.”

Orion’s grim expression makes him uneasy, and he wonders how a look could be so decidedly dark in broad daylight.

Anxiousness has him putting his own cigar in his mouth.

“We’re an hour out of town,” Orion continues. “We can carry on, and you can stick with us. Do as I say, and live just fine in the company of friends. Or you can turn back towards Garrett, and live as you are accustomed.”

The tree they rest under had been struck by lightning. The trunk on one side looked untouched, though the other was singed black. A dead weight supported by whatever strength remained. The man studied it a moment and looked over to Orion.

_If honoring a life meant getting up, he could get up._

”I’ll carry on, then.”


	3. Phantom

The coffee is terrible.

It’s cold and tastes like dirt, but it gives him something to hold in his hands and something to focus on aside from Orion’s pacing.

Because he paces as he reads. He hasn’t changed yet, though discarded his coat and hat and bag and began a steady march from the window to the edge of the desk and back.

The man can’t sit still.

 _I told that boy (_ James _) to not leave_ —a pause, a frown, he squints at the paper— _the coffee out_.

 _Son, you’re a good one. A real good one. I’d ask Marta (_ the woman downstairs who smiled politely when they came in but watched them warily _) to make a fresh one. Oh, but she’s done enough for us already. He’ll (_ James _) get enough from not minding what I say, I’ll tell you that._

But James and the others, Orion tells him, are out. Mason, however, would be around town somewhere. Maybe the post. He folds the paper, tosses it among the others atop the desk and pinches the bridge of his nose.

Sterling City was, unfortunately, exactly as Orion described it. A near copy of Garrett pasted on the Oklahoma prairie like a mirage in a green desert, the only difference being that it boasted a telegram line of which it was wholly proud and convinced that it set them apart.

There _were_ more people, the man noted. Milling around the streets and out of shops as he and Orion came down the road towards the boarding house Orion was staying. And Orion, like a king surveying his kingdom, scanned the street with barely a movement of his head and half-interested gaze towards the buildings they passed, telling him what was what. The post. The bank. The tavern. The church. Another tavern...

And this Mason was at the post. The man thought back to the building with the red facade and sign that loudly announced that this was the ‘WESTERN UNION, EST 1839’ in bold lettering. There had been some men lingering outside, talking and watching a stray sniffing at a puddle of muddy water. The man had thought, maybe if it were to approach the men they would’ve given it something fresh.

Or maybe they would’ve shooed it away, reminding it, it was unnoticed and unwanted, and staying well away was safer for it all along. 

“Oh _enough_ , Nat. You’re making me miserable.”

The cup is taken from him and set aside.

“You need a vice like the rest of us,” Orion grins. “You know how to roll a cigar?”

The man would never admit he’s watched Orion long enough those four days on the road to know how, so he shrugs.

“Yeah, I know how.”

Orion digs his tin from his bag strewn across the chair behind the desk and tosses it to him, the cold metal of it barely brushing his hand before three short, though heavy knocks at the door has them both turning.

He’s talking before he’s fully in the door, agitation in his voice and fists clenched around the handle like a vice.

 _No, there’s nothing from Lars. James and Them aren’t back yet?_ And something else, but it’s faded into background noise. The mans eyes are locked on the newcomers hair, burning like a sunset atop a face lined into an almost permanent frown.

And then,

A pair of brown eyes flicker with alarming quickness towards him. Through him. There’s a question in them. Orion has the answer.

 _The son of a dear friend._ His host says. _Ashley is his name. Nathaniel Ashley. And that Milton fellow we talked about is in want of friends, and he (_ the man _) will be his friend._

Orion stops talking, runs a hand through his hair where it fell loose and clung to his face, and adds as an afterthought.

 _James too_.

“And this is Cormac,” Orion says to him now, nodding at the man in the doorway. “Mason Cormac. My right hand. You’ll never meet a better man.”

Mason is watching him, a mix of curiosity and caution. He lifts his chin, looking at him from down his nose.

“It’s a pleasure, Mr. Ashley.”

Mr. Ashley sounds like a joke. He’s Nathaniel. He _was_ Nathaniel. He’s also ‘son’ to some and ‘a sin’ to others, and if it were his choice he’d be as nameless as that stray outside the post.

“Pleasures all mine.” He says. He looks to where Orion confiscated his cup and remembers the tin of tobacco in his hands.

Mason looks to Orion now.

“Nothing from Lars,” he repeats.

Orion swears under his breath.

“He know’s we’re here, right?”

“I sent him a telegraph. He would’ve gotten it by now.”

The room is suddenly too small. In a crowded sort of way. Though he’s sitting, the man gauges from looking between Mason and Orion that all three of them are of similar heights, though Mason is broader across the shoulders and Orion naturally carries himself in a way that fills a room. But this is different. A part of him has a question. A part of him knows he’s in no position to ask too many of those right now. But though Orion hides it well, worry is evident in the way he drops his eyes. A millisecond and it’s gone.

“Where’s James and the others?”

“Collecting from _someone,_ I don’t even remember, Miller,” Mason sinks into the settee with a groan. “Knowing them, they took a detour.”

Outside the door:  _A detour!_  Muffled and insulted. _Uncle sends us_ —the door swings open and for the first time in six months and four days the man smiles— _halfway across the world for ten dollars, I’m pretending as though I didn’t hear you right, Mason_ —

James is blowing through the room like a dust storm, drops a bag on the desk.

“And if we _were_ to take a detour—“ James is incensed now, Mason watches him with vague amusement. “We wouldn’t be—“

“Shut up, James,” Orion snaps. “Is this how you act in front of old friends?”

And it’s only then, as the indignation of being accused for something that seemed to be entirely likely as it was common fades away, that James sees him.

He squints.

And now, recognition.

A bark of a laugh, and he’s suddenly in a tight embrace.

The brim of James’s hat brushes his forehead and the stiffness gives him pause. It’s fairly new then. Their last catch—the man thinks—must’ve been plenty in it’s offerings.

“It’s been...what? A year? Year and a half?” James asks, stepping back to look him over. Though he is his nephew, the sharpness in his eyes and the broadness of his mouth is Orion through and through. His face, however, remains the same as he remembers, aside from the roughness on his cheeks and new lines in the corners of his eyes.

“Feels longer.”

“What brings you...?”

And _that’s_ right. James wasn’t there those last few visits. He remembers because when his mother sent him outside while she spoke with Orion, swore him to some kind of secrecy, he had been sitting on the porch. Alone. Privately wishing James were there to tell him about what New Mexico was like and how much they managed to get from a five wagon train, not without a dramatic and probably highly elaborated fight. Where the names Cormac, and all the others were characters in James’s stories that the man thought he’d never meet.

Never have to meet.

And Orion changes the subject, “Where are Gillespie, Buchanan, and Reid?”

It sounds like the jaunty name of a grocers, founded by three men who met in church and not at all like three men with a hefty bounty on their heads.

James waves a dismissive hand. “Now _they_ took a detour. Sent me back with the money.”

“So you would’ve stayed with them had you not the money?” Mason tilts his head.

“I never said that!”

“Never mind that. There’s better things to worry about. We haven’t heard from Lars for going on two months and Mr. Milton just got into town yesterday evening. He’s headed out to his claim by now, but it’ll be a while before he’s set up proper.”

“He’s staying at that tavern, right?” James asks. “The one beside the bank?”

Orion nods. “And he’ll be there for while too. I think you and Nat ought to dine there tonight. Make his acquaintance.”

_So now this. Are you desperate?_

James is glancing at him. You’ll tell me later, right? He asks without saying. The man can’t make a promise. Mason has been looking between him and Orion since he came in. He can’t read him. Yet.

Orion has the bag emptied on the desk, coins and bank notes spill across the papers.

Well, Nat, he’s saying, and a bank note is folding under his hand, flattened and held towards him.

“May you not be disappointed. You’re with a good bunch.”

A good bunch? Of outlaws? Or good as in honest? As in an honest bunch of outlaws?

But then again, he did approach him first. He couldn’t live drinking from the mud, and Orion, hand outstretched, wasn’t shooing him away. 


	4. White Lies

> _Northeast Texas, 1840_

_The story went, and the story kept going._

_And going._

_And going.  
_

_It had no ending. It ended when his mother would turn away, or send him out, or just stop talking._

_Mid sentence.  
_

_Edgar Dumas and his party of seven came up from New Orleans on the Mississippi, turned Ohio, turned Wabash, and the year had been 1825.  
_

_And they, these Ashley’s, had a house right along the Wabash River, though the details weren’t important. And it had been only two generations of Ashley’s there, and now it was Nathaniel Jr., Beth, Mercy, and Thomas—in that order—under the roof of their parents, Felicity and Nathaniel Sr. (And she’d always stop and tell him, with a particularly hard look, that it was his uncle, not his grandfather, that he got his name.)  
_

_And Edgar Dumas._

Monsieur _Dumas._

 _Who’s boat hit a rock and tore through the bottom. Who by happenstance came  upon their homestead with more of the river water soaked in his clothes than in the river itself, and Mr. Ashley, taking pity on the young minister, opened arms and home. And Beth, opened her heart. He was handsome, and he had dimples when he smiled, and he spoke fiery and carried himself softly. He called her_ mademoiselle _. He asked for her hand and Mr. Ashley gave it—  
_

_His mother would huff. A mirthless laugh._

_The fire needed a heavy prod, the dishes rearranging. Something. Anything. She was just the woman to do it.  
_

_“Bring in the cows, Nathaniel.” Her back to him. The story tucked away on a shelf of memory, a bright red bookmark sticking up not even halfway through.  
_

_Without a word, he’d obey_.

 

**Sterling City, Oklahoma, 1846**

The facts go, that a man who is prepared to gamble everything on a claim he’s never laid eyes in a territory he’s never set foot, would be in want of friends. Of people to turn to when something went awry.

Milton was no different.

He is Kentucky bred. The man hears it straight away in his voice, and he holds himself upright enough but there’s a subtle tremble as he talks of the wife and daughters back home he’s yet to send for.

He hasn’t touched his meal yet. His hand drags across his sunburnt forehead, worrying at his lower lip. He’ll split it if he keeps at it, the man thinks. James, who had been studying him like he were a tricky word in a book pushes a drink on him.

And James. James who learned from Orion, who’s eyes went soft and hands turned palm up. _I know a man_ , he says. _Oh what’s his name_?

 _Orion_? The man supplies innocently.

 _Orion! Orion. This hymn is called Orion. You see, he knows these parts well and everyone in it, you see, he’ll protect you, see to it your not alone out here._ Hallelujah.

Milton’s eyes filled. He was gone. Swayed. James grinned, and the man felt more a spectator than anything else. It couldn’t be that easy. James gives him a slap on the shoulder and toasts to the two of them. It was that easy.

“Uncle keeps his word, if you keep yours,” James says. They stop outside the boarding house and he sits on the stoop of the porch.

The man joins him.

“Milton will be safe. If he keeps his word.”

“That’s all it takes is it?” The man asks. “A word? Or a fee?”

James leans back on his elbows and studies him in the moonlight. The man braces himself for the inevitable question he knows will follow.

“How did you come to be here?”

“Didn’t Orion tell you?”

James narrows his eyes. “It’s not his story to tell.”

 _Well it’s not mine either, I’m not the one that died_. The man thinks. He picks at a fray thread on his jacket. He could go for one of Orion’s cigars, or the dirt water masquerading as coffee, or _something_ right about now. James is staring at him like a father would to a son who’s telling half truths. If he wants an answer, he’ll give him one. Specially made just for him.

“Ma died,” the man says. He forces his face to relax. “Your uncle came by not long after and there was nothing else for me. I knew him good enough. I decided to go with him.”

“Just like that?”

The man opens his hands from where they were clasped in front of him. “Just like that.”

James nods, eyes dropping and the two sit in silence for the duration of seven heartbeats and an owl in the nearby tree to finish its preening and fly, like a ghost, due north.

“I’m sorry about your ma.” James says.

“It’s fine.”

Another beat of silence, and then James is standing, offering a hand to the man.

“You’re with family now, and that’s all that matters, eh?” He asks. A lopsided smile. It’s contagious, and the man returns it.

* * *

 

Here at the border of purgatory and Hell he plays cards with a man who calls himself Henry Gillespie. Who has the warmest brown eyes the man has ever seen, who very well could be as good as a saint hadn’t the man known the reason of their game. This reason, being that this was less a card game and more of a game of questions and answers. Gillespie questions. The man answers.

Henry asks him now over his cards, a devilish grin on his face, do you give up?

And sometimes he wants to wake up because this is happening too quickly. One minute he’s handing over a roped cow for three dollars and the next he’s in the In Between.

No he doesn’t give up.

Henry has a card up his sleeve and he’s caught on.

He has one up his too.

The others came in the early morning, with the pink painted sky and heavy mist at their backs. Marta and Nathaniel were the only ones awake at this hour. She, busily humming and kneading at a mound of dough. He, sitting near to the fire smoking in peaceful quiet. He thought he had smelled a distillery all of a sudden, or something like if someone smashed open a barrel of something painfully potent, but thought it just a figment of imagination.

It was when he saw shadows pass the window and the curtain blow out ever so slightly that he realized two things. The window was open, and they had company.

Henry Gillespie, Thaddeus Buchanan, and Caleb Reid. He learned their names later, for when they came in, all gave him a sort of tired albeit suspicious look and went upstairs. The smell of alcohol and several days without the sight of clean water following them.

He took a long drag and waited.

A terse conversation through the floorboards. Masons voice and another. One of theirs. Marta came out with a question in her eyes. She looked up to the ceiling as the voices rose and fell, rolled her eyes, and went back to her kneading with a heavy sigh.

When the other residents of the boarding house began to wake and meander downstairs, the man took to one of the chairs on the porch, watching the town wake. A moment at the start of the day where it felt as though he were spectator to an ancient ritual of morning pleasantries.

Birds to sky, sky to horizon: _Good morning, did you rest well? Fine, thank you._

Smoke from the chimneys to the trees, man to woman, woman to child: _It’s a fine Tuesday isn’t it? A perfectly good one._

It’s natural. This busy solitude. He’s basking in it when the door opens and heavy footsteps approach him from behind.

“Nathaniel Ashley?”

He turns. One of the men from earlier. His hair a deep chocolate combed and damp and his hands around a small box.

“Henry Gillespie,” he says, and raised the box. “Do you play?”

He’s cheated at three games thus far.

“Alright, Nathaniel Ashley, it’s your turn then,” Henry says now, “Is that even your real name?”

“Why wouldn’t it be?”

“You think Orion is _his_ real name?” Henry asks in a half whisper.

The man blinks.

“Ah, but never mind that. Take your turn or I’ll take it for you.”

The man scans his cards absentmindedly. He never thought that Orion wasn’t his real name. But if someone wanted to change their name then it didn’t seem something entirely strange. It seemed easier to spell and quicker to introduce than ‘Wanted for land fraud and the robbery of stagecoaches’ as the posters deemed him at any rate.

“What’s his real name then?” A five of hearts joins their deck.

“He’d have to tell you that. What are you anyway, another nephew?”

“No he’s...a friend of my family’s back in Garrett.”

Henry nods. “Knew him awhile then did you? Lucky that. Thaddeus and I only knew him a week before we went with him.”

Henry pauses, snaps a finger and shakes his head as though coming to a realization.

“The one with the freckles? Tall one? _That’s_ Thaddeus. Y’all haven’t met yet,” he winks. “Our fault.”

“How did you come to know him?”

“We met at Fontenelle’s Post. Thaddeus and I were in the fur business.”

“I meant Orion”

“We met by and by,” Henry said, waving a hand in dismissal. “And besides I don’t know what’s story and what’s true. Only that we three eventually met there, then we quit and headed south. Met Caleb at a post in Kansas Territory and Mason...I don’t remember where we met Mason come to think of it.”

They continue the game in silence. The man weighing this new information, though it wasn’t exactly new _anything_ was it? Henry knew who he was, who Orion was to him, and where he was from all in the span of ten minutes. And as for him?

The man only knew Henry used to be a furtrapper.

He freezes, hand hovering over a three of spades. This game was one sided this entire time. He attempts to level it.

“Is Henry _your_ real name?”

A snort, and a smile.

“You learn quickly, Nathaniel Ashley. You’ll do fine.”

Before he could try and decipher that meaning, the door opens again and Mason comes out, shirt half tucked and grips the back of Henry’s chair, locking eyes with Nathaniel.

“When did you say Milton was coming?” Urgency heavy in his tone.

”Noon.” 

Mason nods. “One o’clock we’re leaving.”

As though on some unspoken cue, Henry stands, gathering the cards and nodding to Nathaniel, hurries inside.

”Leaving? Why?” 

“It’s Lars.” 

The door was still swinging shut from Henry’s quick exit when Mason follows him inside.

_It’s Lars._

Lars who still remained nothing but a name to him.

Who was another piece in the puzzle that was Orion.

Looking down, he notices the cards still in his hand.


End file.
